The marketplace
Switchboard is a private marketplace: a multi-tenant platform where each buyer and seller transacts directly with its own counterparties, on the terms between them. It is hosted by Simulmedia in every case: one state layer, one catalog service, one audit trail. What varies is how counterparties connect to it and where demand comes from. Switchboard moves the order; the decisions stay with the parties.
Roles
- Sellers publish packages, rates, and availability, and approve orders. Multi-network groups model as a family: one
seller_id, many networks; order units carry bothprovider(the bookable entity, "National TNT") andnetwork(the channel, "TNT"). - Buyers discover, order, and track. An
agreementobject gates what each buyer can see and on what terms. - Agents act for either side with scoped credentials. Approval gates apply to agents exactly as to humans.
Catalogs: private and open
Private catalogs carry negotiated rates and custom packages scoped to an agreement: this is the bilateral path, one buyer and one seller on the terms between them. Open catalogs are published at standard terms and visible to any authorized buyer, with no relationship required. Both ride the same schema and the same order lifecycle, like PMP deals and open exchange in digital.
What a catalog reveals is itself a seller choice. A seller can publish availability and rates, answer them on request, or hold them back and quote each campaign, and can set that posture per package and per relationship. See Disclosure.
Two paths to demand
The primary path is bilateral: sellers bring their own demand, and existing buyer relationships transact on private catalogs, with Switchboard as pure rails between the two parties. And Switchboard brings demand to sellers: marketplace buyers on open catalogs, including Simulmedia's own demand, which trades on the same rails, same rules, and is always disclosed.
{package_id}:{date}); a unit is one airing bought within a line; and spots is only the name of the unit currency, alongside impressions. One term you will also meet, placement_receipt, is the booking artifact on a placed order, not an inventory concept. For how the nouns relate on the wire, see the object model.The Simulmedia catalog
Simulmedia also operates as a seller tenant. Packaged products it curates from marketplace inventory (remnant access, reach packs, audience-guaranteed wraps) are listed on the Simulmedia catalog at published prices, labeled sold-by-Simulmedia, and transact through the same lifecycle, gates, and audit as every other listing. Think of these the way you think of the general deals a platform mints in programmatic: useful defaults, clearly branded, never confused with a seller's own storefront. Your direct access to a seller's special rates comes from agreements, not from us.